The iPad is here.

5 Apr 2010 - Xavier Facon
I pre-ordered the iPad via the Apple website.   Even though the Apple site mentioned the Saturday April 3 delivery date, I was really expecting it on Monday.  On Friday, I tracked the package via the UPS site in the style of NORAD tracking Santa.  This was yet another reality check of where these beautiful electronics are manufactured. The package was still in Guangzhou, China.  Our UPS guy generally doesn't even attempt deliveries in the weekend to our business address, so I called UPS. Before I could get through to an agent, an automated message preempted me.  It announced to all impatient kids waiting for their iPad (or something like that) that it was going to get delivered on Saturday.  Indeed, it even arrived in the morning.

Once in possession of the device, the crazy idea of taking a golf club to it before even turning it on like Daniel Tosh did in this clip flashed through my head. But that would have been a really stupid thing to do.  Minutes after using the device, it became obvious--this device stands up really well to all it was hyped to be.
 
Even though many people have said that this is all about the irrational culture created by Apple's marketing genius, I have a perfectly rational explanation for the popularity this device is having. Here it goes.
 
Evident by the basically unchanged Windows PCs many of us have been using for at least a decade now, the consumer is pretty tolerant to the often poor user interfaces of personal computers. After all, what choice did we have?  This has not been the case for cell phones. There has been a lot of choice of different mobile software platforms.  Since the first Motorola 3000 cell phone circa 1983, all the way up to today, if a mobile phone is hard to use, it will sell poorly and it will give the mobile operator a huge customer support headache. Since I started using a Blackberry 957, I have wished the same care for detail would be put into the user interface of an actual computer OS.
 
This is it. The iPad is a small computer with the well designed user interface of a cellphone--the iPhone.  I can find a large collection of content and software especially designed and optimized for this exact hardware. This is not the case on everyone's PC. In contrast to some PCs, it is a computing experience without the common frustrations of slow software, clogged menus or searing hot laptops with 4 hour battery lives.  Not surprisingly, it is individuals who have great computer skills who don't understand the hype about iPad.  They miss the point. They are often happy Linux users unaware of user interface obstacles common to software.
 
Users of the iPhone had seen what developers are capable of in terms of interactivity design on a constrained mobile device. Those are the same users who bought approximately 700,000 iPads over the weekend.  It's a great example of less is more.  I read a great blog post by Matt Gemmell on iPad user interface design here.  The more direct a consumer can interact with content the more fun they have.  So far, because of the large touch screen on a mobile 'always-on' device, the iPad allows more direct interaction with content than any other. The device is surprisingly fast thanks to the A4 CPU that can move data 64bits at a time.
 
Seeing the great full screen advertisements for Coca-cola, Oracle, Buick, and several other advertisers in between the content of great iPad optimized applications (like the WSJ and USA Today applications), I expect this device to be a darling of brand advertisers.   The combination of large full page interstitials with integrated video works really well. Advertisers finally have the tripple threat: size, interactivity and measurability.
 
This is great news for those who bought the iPad. Your favorite newspapers, magazines and TV shows are likely to be largely free to download.  For mobile publishers, this is a chance to take more control over monetizing their content as well.  The ad network model that has been helpfull in mobile because of its efficiency, I expect to be less important for iPad apps.  Regardless what you call rich media on mobile (H.264, HTML5, JavaScript or Flash), the iPad can support more impressive advertisements than any popular mobile device.

Quality Counts: Crisp-powered Sites Up for Webbys, Apple Staff Pick

11 Apr 2008 - Tamara Gruber

According to Nielsen Mobile, more than 13 percent of the (oops, thanks for the correction)32 40 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. access the Internet from their phone monthly (as per Nielsen.) Of the sites that consumers are visiting, we see over 60 percent of them are still going to "on-deck" sites, with another 27 percent of traffic going direct to the address or bookmarked sites. In fact, only a mere 4 percent of mobile web traffic is driven from search. This shows that consumers are looking for information that not only is fast and relevant, but also from publishers that they trust.

Given the awkwardness of the phone interface, the size of the screen, and the nature of the medium, the average consumer does not want to take chances on sources they are not familiar with. In other words, quality counts. Crisp understands these needs and how to automatically optimize content for a myriad of device types. So it is no wonder that five sites that were created and powered by Crisp have been nominated for Webby Awards.

In the News category, Crisp-powered sites dominate, with three out of five nominations -- CNN, USA Today, and NPR. Under Entertainment, two of the five sites nominated are powered by Crisp -- Bravo and Cosmopolitan.

Crisp also recently launched a site with Time Magazine that has been optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This site was chosen as a "Staff Pick" by Apple and featured at Apple.com.

Premium publishers turn to Crisp for sites that are scalable, reliable, well-designed and superiorly constructed--making our Mobile Publisher network of over 200 sites one of the largest in the United States.

 

Will the Apple iPhone Negate Android?

21 Mar 2008 - Xavier Facon

I recently had a chance to download Apple’s new iPhone SDK that enables developers to write downloadable applications that will run on the Apple iPhone 2.0 starting in June or July. I’ve read the feedback from developers, journalists, and bloggers and there are a fair amount of people slamming Apple because of how they are looking to control the distribution and how you supposedly need to pay for getting full access to all development materials.

Well, I don’t find that to be the case. Development for iPhone appears to be free until you want to load the application on a real phone. (This is not unlike other mobile development in BREW or Java ME.) Instead, what I found is a smartly managed development program for a market leading distribution system (iTunes). Everyone that thinks Apple is getting it wrong by controlling application sales must not have learned the history of mobile application distribution including the platform fragmentation, network security problems and the mobile operator’s difficulty in enabling discovery and sales for downloadable applications. Apple will make sure there is little fragmentation, make it easy to sell outside of carriers, and build a reputation on number of apps available and the safety of downloading.It is possible the opposite will happen with Android, where the multiple manufacturers with approved Android distributions could be fragmenting capabilities and the more open nature of the platform could turn out to be a security risk. Besides, who is going to apply a GUI on Android that the consumer prefers over the iPhone interface? I’m sure someone’s still working on that.

With the iPhone starting to be sold worldwide in an unlocked version and the completion of their application distribution model, there will be a tipping point this summer where analysts might consider Android too late to outdo Apple. The potential iPhone sales are extremely high, due in small part to the unexpected effort Apple put in making the device more enterprise friendly. The touch screen can still be a limitation for the email user but the factor of MS Exchange integration and running custom secure touch screen enterprise apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch via WiFi does make the platform a viable alternative to Windows Mobile.

This means that more and more publishers will begin wanting iPhone specific sites to address this expanding market and capitalize on the user interface. We’ve already seen this happening with our existing customer base and you will begin to see more news from Crisp about this shortly.